Here is what the kitchen looked like when we moved in except that there used to be a large pantry where that wall area has been torn out. Our contractor built a new pantry right next to where the old pantry was located. This allowed for enough wall space to let us relocate a ten foot stretch of upper cabinets from the north wall to the west wall. And then we cut a big hole in the north wall to [...]

Ladd Drummond in the News!!!

January 27th, 2011

Okay so according to the above embedded news story from Oklahoma Channel 6news (follow link if the video fails), Ladd Drummond claims that of the $1.04 million dollars the government pays him to take care of the 3400 wild horses that roam his ranch, he profits only one hundred thousand dollars? Where is all the rest of that money going? Is he taking these horses to fashion week in Paris? Does each horse have it’s own masseuse? Does he feed them gourmet hay? Does he buy each horse a Pottery Barn quilt for a saddle blanket?

Also – do his profits include the money generated off of his wife’s blog that so stupidly chronicle the mustangs on their ranch?

According to this video, his expenses include:

1. Feed in the winter

2. Salt and mineral in the summer

Evidently it costs nine hundred and forty thousand dollars for three months of hay, salt and mineral in Oklahoma?

What is this mineral?

Solid gold???

Diamonds???

Plutonium??????

_______________________________________________________________________________
For those of you who aren’t aware of the current debacle that is the Bureau of Land Management and it’s bizarre philosophy on wild horse care, it is a huge controversy spanning decades of love, lust, murder, and meat. I have been working on a post about it for weeks. There’s so much to learn. I may never get the dang thing finished, but I aim to TRY!

In the mean time…

Yesterday the sun came out and it warmed up enough to take some photos for the upcoming Pie Near Woman Rides a Wild Mustang Saga of Love, Lust, Murder and Meat.

Clad only in my third son’s snow-boots and my eldest son’s snow-pants, I played with the Barbies in the snow like a little kid. My fervent and febrile prayer rising to the heavens that each and everyone of my neighbors was watching my snow encrusted foibles!

I’d like to send a special thanks to Lori for sending me some fabulous BLM mustangs for this story. She even gave them the proper BLM brand! You can see it on the little gray horse and also on the one that is almost overwhelmed by Pie Near’s tutu. And yes, that is a new tutu. It’s her winter molt. She also has some new boots. Closet inventory giveaway to follow!

But back to Ladd and his millions… uh I mean his hundred thousand. The main problem as I see it is this…

The government pays ranchers like Ladd Drummond $1.30/per something called an ‘animal unit’ (au) which equals one horse per day to care for a herd of wild horses. Believe it or not one animal unit (au) does not always mean one animal. A cow and her calf is also considered an animal unit.

au = one wild horse.

au = one cow and her calf

Therefore

one wild horse = one cow and her calf

The reason the government ships thousands of wild horses to Drummond and his ilk is so that cattle ranchers in the big western states don’t have to share the public grazing lands with the wild horses.

Let me just break this down…

Cattle ranchers in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Colorado, California etc want to use public land to graze their cows.

This public land is supposed to belong to you, me and the wild horses, but it really seems to belong to private interests with powerful lobbies in Washington.

Unfortunately the cattle must compete for resources on the public lands with the wild horses who are protected by law and cannot be killed.

According to the BLM there aren’t enough resources on the land to support both the horses and the cattle, so the government opts to move the wild horses to large land barons in primarily Oklahoma and Kansas such as our hero of the haunches, Ladd Drummond.

The government pays Ladd Drummond $1.30 per mustang per day.

The government then charges ranchers who use public lands $1.35 per cow/calf per month.

So the government pays Ladd Drummond THIRTY TIMES what it charges ranchers in the big western states to graze their cattle on public land. Cattle ranchers in the west get cheap subsidized grazing land on which to grow their cows and Ladd Drummond gets rich off the taxpayers backs! It’s a total win/win! Yay!

Except taking care of horses is a lot easier than taking care of cows! You never have to turn a horse into a hamburger patty.

I tell you what! If I was a rancher I would get the HELL out of the cow business and get myself into the mustang business fast!

And then for Gawd’s sake! Please write a blog about it! There’s nothing better than reading about and looking at gorgeous pictures of the wild mustangs that I am paying Ladd Drummond a million dollars to babysit. So awesome!

Did Drummond say “this is how we make our living”???…uh I thought he was a CATTLE RANCHER. Funny how his wife used to make it sound they were taking care of the mustangs out of the kindness of their hearts…bleh…they are nothing but photo ops for her blog…

and Pie Near Woman preview, what can I say…..GENIUS!

Rechelle:

I heard Ladd Drummond say with my very own ears that he makes more money off the horses than he does off his cows. It’s kind of like a type of welfare for the extremely wealthy.

If I get this correctly, while America was in the midst of a serious financial crisis that caused people to lose their jobs and homes, she was remodeling the lodge with tax payers money and was rubbing it into everyone’s faces on her blog but never said a word where all that Drummond money came from?

Barb:

Well said, Debbie.

JJ:

AND baking a cake – in her own little way saying “let them eat cake”?

Mo:

If I were Ladd, I would have put the kibosh on that little woman from even mentioning the horses because this can come to no good for them.

And I hope this information is wrong. I hope there are some other expenses not being mentioned. I hope with all my heart that the government is not letting them make a profit of $100,000 per year for taking care of horses even though they already make a comfy living from cattle while I’m a federal employee who won’t get a raise until 2013 because of our “shitty economy.” I will keep trying to see the love in this situation, but I will admit to everyone here it’s a little bit hard to do.

So to what office do I submit my mustang caretaker contract application? Because I own an entire half acre of property, and I want IN.

Heather:

1/2 acre will support a single horse for approximately 3 months out of a year.

$117 a year ought to make you right comfy.

We should have a lynching! How dare someone else on this earth own more than 1/2 acre of land and make a profit off of it!!?!?!?!

Furthermore. As a private sector employee who has taken a PAY CUT every year for the past three years… you need to get over your federal government employee self… I’m A-OK with you not getting a raise when the rest of the country is being asked to take cuts.

Mo:

Heather your private sector employer who most likely is in business for profit is the one asking you to take a pay cut every year, our country is not asking you to do that. And I am A-OK with your right to agree to take that pay cut.

My opinion is still that a $100,000 profit from taxpayer money seems excessive under these circumstances. That’s why I said I hoped the information was wrong.

annmarie:

Heather – this is welfare, plain and simple. Do you have no problems at all with any type of welfare, or just welfare for the rich?

Samantha:

You bet it is welfare….for the wealthy.

Why is it that the more land you have the more perks you get to not pay as much taxes (like your share) as say the small land owner. I get so irritated where I live these big landowners hold their land in land use, paying the lowest on taxes and then after a few years take it out of land use and sell the land to developers for BIG money. Land use was supposed to promote conservation of the land but all the big landowners use it as a tax shelter….y’know like everything they do…it’s all about profits baby!

Bridget:

One would think that there might be some sympathy, dare I say empathy between you because you are both going through a similar experience with your jobs. You are both having to deal with not getting paid the amount of money your job is worth. Instead of telling someone to get over themselves. Maybe this is a time for both parties to see the similarity in their situations and offer some words of support or condolences.

I can understand the frustration that many government workers must feel when they are told they are going to have to wait for a raise or wait to fill positions until the firing freeze is over. Then congress turns around and refuses to increase min. wage, votes to give themselves a raise, and refuses to take any steps towards a election finance reform. Because it they did then they would actually have to start finding solutions to the our current problems- economy and other issues- but without those reforms special interest groups will continue to control congress and the economy is surely going to decline.

Which leaves people in both the private sector and the public sector in a bit of a bind and from getting paid what they are worth. What you should both be upset about is that no matter what the politicians that are suppose to be serving us and therefore looking for ways to fix our countries problems are never asked to take pay cuts or asked to wait until they take a raise. The fight should not be between you two because you two are just the small picture, but the fight should be with the bigger picture.

And if I was in either one of your shoes, I would be upset that taxpayer money is being paid out to cattle farmers to take care of wild horses.

But that is just me and I am not big on confrontation especially when the two people involved are angry over the same thing- the current state of the economy. And whatever sector you are in. It only seems reasonable that a person would be upset if they weren’t getting a raise or getting their salary cut back. See you two are really just going through the same thing.

Mo:

Thanks Bridget, you are right. I overreacted to being told what I need to do, and it wasn’t my intention to wish hard times on anyone or imply my hard times are any worse than any one else.

And to clarify I don’t have a problem with the Drummonds or anyone owning gazillions of acres or making a profit, no lynching is necessary. I do have a problem with with the government spending money on programs and contracts that can be done differently for less.

But I don’t know how many people the Drummonds employ or the details of their expenses or of their contract, all of us only have bits and pieces and the Drummonds don’t owe any explanation. I also appreciate Heather sharing an example of a breakdown of what it costs to keep a horse.

Still seems like too much profit to me. When you [the government] have negative $10 to feed your family [shitty economy], you don’t go out and charge cookies and frosting on your credit card because cookies and frosting are beautiful and majestic [horses].

Lucky for us we live in a country where we can question without fear how the government spends money and on what.

According to this contract detail, they have 4 employees, but that just doesn’t seem right. I would have thought they’d have more than that working for them.

JJ:

Yes Mo – we are VERY lucky to live in a country where we can question our government without fear – we can all have our say. Sometimes though I do make those cookies and frost them because I NEED some beauty in my life! ( I make home made though because I’m still frugal!)
Now maybe this is kind of like trickle down economics – The government pays the wealthy land owner to take care of the horses – the wealthy landowner pays his workers, fixes up his house, lets his wife buy those Pottery Barn quilts. That keeps Pottery Barn in business – and they can pay their workers, including people in other countries who sew those quilts and make maybe 1.00 per day if that. (BUT they wouldn’t have a job at all if that quilt factory had not been put in their town AND we will organize and fight for fair labor practices in their country in the near future when they get a small taste of the good life and want to rise up and fight for a better wage).
then with that dollar they can go down to the local market and get some horse meat ( which some other countries do eat…) – which OUR GOVERNMENT COULD SELL TO THEM! Trickle down? Circle of life? HA! Solution to the problem! ;)

action squirrel:

I can’t quite tell whether you are being a bit facetious with the trickle down, but in case you’re being serious or someone else thinks this is a great scenario, I had to pipe in and say that trickle down does not work when the people on the direct receiving end of gobs of money prefer to keep it for themselves, thank you very much. Eg the Drummonds and the managing board of Pottery Barn (whose products, btw, are made in China. Hooray for Chinese jobs and exports!).

“Trickle down” is Republican for “Rich guys keep it all and everybody thanks them for it.”

JJ:

Yes Action Squirrel, I was going for a little bit of sarcasm there and you are oh so right about trickle down AND about the fact that some MAY take me seriously ( I thought the winkie face at the end might help but many might miss that). I was very surprised when my more liberal, newly Baptist ordained preacher 2nd cousin ( kind of doesn’t fit ) mentioned that he really got a kick out of Jon Stewart and that opposite right wing guy that “comes on after him”. Colbert? Yes that guy. The parody GOP guy whose hair I would love to ruffle up, who I, your 40 something democratic cousin, am just falling in love with for his sarcastic, witty tongue? Yeah – BUUUT I don’t think he is really a parody of the GOP; he sounds like he really MEANS some of that stuff…. Hmmmmm – And then by coming across some comments, (for other articles) I found that some people do take Colbert SERIOUSLY as a GOP guy. They REALLY think he is slamming liberals and do not get the sarcasm. So thank you – I really do not support trickle down crap – and I would not want to be a party to that GOP party. I do not want to lead anyone astray.
AND if the US sold the horse meat to China ( and I really have no idea if they eat horse in China – just a what if!)- you know we would somehow still get screwed in that deal – we would have to buy their chickens for like 10x the amount that they would buy our horse meat or something like that ( again what if – do not quote me on the price! and yes the US made a deal with China to sometime in the distant future buy their chicken – I do not have any dates or time lines
though)

action squirrel:

Ok JJ you never know. Because, as you point out, there are plenty of people who don’t get the Colbert joke one teeny bit. Unreal. I bet they laugh when everyone else does, though. Not that they know what they’re laughing about.

JJ:

It always seems greener on the other side of the fence – government employees always make too much money – the private sector makes more money – back and forth. It always pays for those in charge to get the other people mad about something else – takes their focus off of the bigger picture. I don’t even think I would be angry with the government paying for someone to care for the horses IF they would make the cattle ranchers who want to use our public lands for grazing pay accordingly. The rent for grazing should support the relocation and feed of the horses which it doesn’t . Now yes we still have the overpopulation of the mustangs to deal with, but the ranchers still would want to use the land for grazing cattle and they should pay a fair price to rent OUR land.
For some reason the balance on both sides of the scale NEVER comes out quite equal in government deals – if you want this and it costs so much then you have to fund it with that much.
And aren’t a lot of the so called big cattle ranchers now in contract with the big meat companies – there is just a few of them. I’m sure the companies broker the big government deals. Maybe THEY are the ones to be mad at…

Carol:

Sorry – I have a mental image of you clad ONLY in your son’s snowboots and snowpants- ala the SNL Martha Stewart Topless Holiday Special. Still grinning. : )

Carol, I also took her comment “clad only in my third son’s snow-boots and my eldest son’s snow-pants” literally at first. Then I remembered that she lives in Kansas, not Vermont or Oregon (who are known for the lax laws regarding public nudity). A fact which Rechelle’s neighbors, if they read this blog, are probably newly happy about.

Heather:

Lets do some math and then consider the alternative.

$1.30 per day per horse = approximately $475 per horse per year.

In the winter, a horse needs anywhere from 25-30 lbs of hay per day. The cost of hay is anywhere from $.05 – $.075 per pound = up to $2.25 worth of hay consumed by each horse in a day. For arguments sake, we’ll use the low end of $1.25 worth of hay per day.

A safe estimate for the average growing season in NE Oklahoma is 200 days per year, requiring them to provide enough supplemental hay for the horses for 165 days. That equals $206 per horse per year on the low end, and $370 per horse per year on the high end.

A years worth of salt and minerals for an average size horse costs approximately $75.

That is $281 per year to $445 per year per horse in raw costs incurred by the raches that utilize this program. Or an average of $363. $475 less $363 = $112 per horse per year difference.

$112 per horse x 2200 horse = $246,000. Add on top of that the cost of gasoline to drive out to these pastures to feed them, the cost of ranch hand’s salarys, etc, and $100,000 per year is not an unreasonable estimate.

An alternative to this is to euthanize and dispose of each of these animals from BLM land. Do you know what those costs are?

I’m all for having a little fun, but your mockery in this instance seems out of line when you look at logistics.

Rechelle:

Heather – those are some mighty fine mathematics you got going on there. Personally, I think a one hundred thousand dollar profit is a’plenty for babysitting horses for the govt. Why don’t you work up a chart for babysitting humans in your average govt funded daycare and see how it compares?

Bridget:

It doesn’t matter how much or how little they make off of each horse. Debating that is missing the point entirely. As Rechelle pointed out and which the facts support, is that the horses are being taken off public land so that those lands can remain open to cattle farmers. If the farmers would just take care of their cattle on their own land then there would be no need to move the horses. Thus eliminating the need for the government to pay people to take care of the horses and that much needed money could go elsewhere. This is bullshit and a crime against the tax payer.

The cattle industry has a huge and powerful lobbying force in Washington and it strives to protect the interest of the very rich ranchers that can afford to pay a lobbyist’s salary, so I really don’t see this situation changing in the near future. Which is a damn shame, but it is important that people become aware of this practice.

I understand that some ranchers would go under if their cattle had to
compete with the horses on public lands, but these ranchers are already struggling as it is and probably don’t have the resources to take in the
horses. This system hurts them as well because it ensures that the
bigger operations stay wealthy and in control.

These mustangs wouldn’t be such a problem if the sale of horse meat wasn’t banned in America. Many other countries see horse meat as delicacy and I think our aversion to it comes to the value judgement that we place on these animals. A horse is seen as a majestic animal, smart, a companion for humans, but a cow is just a dumb animal. Many would argue that a cow has many of the same attributes as a horse, but we don’t see it because to us they are simply used for food. If we have no problems killing cows then there should be no problem killing a horse because they are just animals. It is just a matter of perception.

And before you think i am just a heartless animal hater. I just think that part of the solution to this problem would be to cull the herds and bring them down to sizes that the land is capable of supporting this is what would happen naturally if the herds were left to defend for themselves. A population can not grow in size beyond the avaiable resources. Only humans can do that because we practice agriculture.

The other solution is to limited the amount of cattle being raised and for consumers to demand a higher standards and a better quality of beef product. That would also require that people practice some self control and reduce their meat intake, and stop supporting fast food chains.

I can’t imagine that killing the horses costs more than keeping them well fed and taken care of for 20 to 30 years. If cost less to kill an inmate on death row than to allow him to live out his life in prison then people shouldn’t be so up in arms about killing some horses. Okay I will admit i might of went a bit too far with that one.

At least now we know how Ree can afford all those flown tops of hers, but I am not entirely convinced that Ree is a she and if that is the case then she is going to need to all the money that she can make off those horses. A drag queen’s upkeep does not come cheap. Some of my best friends are drag queens and they spend a ton on make up and fake hair.

Bridget:

I meant to say then it should also be cheaper to kill a horse than to allow it to live out it’s life on a rancher’s private land. When will I learn to proofread?

Another huge group that is behind giving benefits and welfare to rich ranchers is the fast food industry. That want ranchers to have as many breaks as possible because it keeps the price of beef low. The fast food industries also buys much of its beef from South America where farmers cut down the rain forest to provide grazing land for cattle. I really see a need for stricter regulations on the cattle industry and a need for tougher quality control.

Maybe I am just a damn, bleeding heart, dirty, liberal, hippie but I think that many of our problems stems from a lust for cheap food and meat, oil, and the need to buy plastic shit from China. And the greed of big business and major industries that tells us what we should want and desire, and too many people are just struggling to get by and they don’t have the time or the energy to question the constant bombardment of messages telling us to consume.

action squirrel:

Just to be argumentative, I’ve known many horses, many and attempted, and failed, from sheer boredom, to know a number of cows. The attributes horses and cows share are about as numerous as those we share with storks.

As a gross aside, killing horses is not particularly expensive. Sell them at auction and ship them to slaughter in Mexico.

I consider mustangs to be as important a landmark as any other in the US, and don’t think that 1.30 per day is really very much to keep a horse fed and healthy. It’s kind of insanely little, actually, if you are also supposed to call in a vet now and then, though I suppose they don’t bother.

It seems that cattle ranching in the US, or farming generally, is dead. Or has at least been massively eclipsed by the corporate industrial food machine. Yes, there is a big organic small-farming movement but it’s a drop in the bucket of food supplies. The appalling taste the US and the world has for cheap meat and cheap food generally probably won’t change until imports and current industrial farming practices are restricted and consumers forced to pay the REAL cost of these foods (ha.) or all cows worldwide drop dead of a virulent antibiotic-resistant brain-wasting disease (ok maybe) or all the consumers of cheap meat everywhere drop dead of heart attack, diabetes, or ice age.

JJ:

I am with you Action Squirrel on all points you made about our food consumption and our demand for cheap food – we have basically put ourselves in this dangerous food predicament.
BUT – your suggestion to ship those mustangs down to MEXICO – well – that is just sending good work across the border. I mean if we are going to have to kill those mustangs well we should just do it here ourselves – those should be American jobs! ( here is my little winkie guy ;) )

action squirrel:

Little winkie guy duly noted.

However, butchering animals en masse is not a job fit for good good-fearing patriotic American citizens. But you may be on to something: let’s lobby Washington for the right to process horse meat in the US, that way great Americans corporations that love Jesus can still earn plenty of money while poor starving illegal Mexican immigrants do the dirty dangerous work under outrageously hazardous and inhumane conditions, like they do with all the beef, chicken and pork, anyway.

JJ:

Hmmm – I have a friend who works at a daycare. She makes about $8 per hour – BUT she has about 4-6 little toddlers on any given day AND she usually has to help out with kids from the other age groups at some point. So on a light day she may make $2 per child per hour – and that is not a govt funded daycare. IL by the way has not even been keeping up with its bills – a lot of their payments to govt. childcare facilities have not been paid. Keep watching the kids, the check is in the mail!

I’m not inclined to choose a horse in this race (get it?) but to answer your question:

“An alternative to this is to euthanize and dispose of each of these animals from BLM land. Do you know what those costs are?”

Yes, in fact, I do: a one time, sunk cost, rather than an open-ended annual payment for an indefinite term. Were it your employer, from whom you say you have taken a pay cut for the past three years, paying out the monies every single year to people to care for BLM horses versus that same employer taking a one time writedown of the cost of euthanizing the animals, and thereby freeing up the capital that would otherwise be spent, which would you prefer?

“Question: What is the Administration’s position on the use of euthanasia as a method of controlling the number of wild horses maintained in holding facilities?

Answer: Although the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, as amended, directs the humane putting down of excess wild horses for which no adoption demand exists, the Administration has no intention of using this controversial authority as a method of controlling or reducing the holding population. ”

And for the number crunchers:

“As of October 2010, nearly 38,000 removed horses and burros are fed and cared for in off-the-range holding facilities, the cost of which exceeded $36 million out of the entire wild horse and burro budget of $63.9 million in Fiscal Year 2010 (plus an additional $2.1 million in 2009 “carryover” funding).”

I gather that “off-the-range” facilities may well refer to operations like the Drummond’s, with over half the entire budget applied toward those operations. Figuring right at $36M for right at 38K animals, that’s just under a grand per animal. I also found an item in the Congressional Record from 2005 (House, Vol 151, Pt. 8, May 19, 2005) indicating that overpopulation and unsustainable numbers is not exactly a new issue. So I question the continued cost of this (when populations have to be removed from public land due to the degradation of the region because of the presence of the horses and burros) when we have humane methods of putting down or culling the herds to more sustainable levels that would allow them to remain on true public lands instead of parceling them out to off the range operations. While $36M or $64M is a drop in the bucket compared to the defense budget that people want to hang on to like it’s the holy grail, it seems some common sense could be used here.

Bridget:

I think that the government auctioned off its common sense on ebay. The highest bidder was greed. So now the country functions on greed and money and common sense has gone the way of the dodo. Although, I wish that it would come back and be used more frequently.

annmarie:

This is sick. What a farce this whole thing is. At some point in the past month Ree had the balls to say something on her blog ( or maybe it was one of the million interviews I saw of her) about how there are things she gets really upset over and things she will speak out against in her “typically quiet” way (yes, she said that -she really did) but she said the horses are not something she is willing to get upset about because they have them for as long as they have them and she is just going to enjoy them while she can. They are just such a gift. A gift that keeps giving is what she left out. She completely insinuated that they were really getting nothing out of the horses at all except the pleasure of taking hundreds upon hundreds of pics of them, so I am really confused as to why Ladd said that this is how they make their living. The Drummonds are a real slick bunch. This makes my blood boil. BUT, I am salivating over the thoughts of a new pnw post and laughing thinking about Rechelle playing in the snow with her barbies.

JudyB:

Whether right or wrong, it sounds like they are making money offerred by a government program, to them, to take the horses and care for them on their property. Be mad at the program, not the Drummonds and other ranchers taking advantage of it.

Rechelle:

I have no problem ‘being mad’ at people who take advantage of taxpayers. I wouldn’t do it and if I did, I would hate myself. Why should I not hold other people to the same standard?

Bridget:

No kidding, Rechelle. We should be angry with the people who knowingly rip off tax payer’s money, people that use the efforts of the working poor to make even more fucking money. Getting mad at the program is a complete waste of time because it is the people that accept the program and use the program that are keeping it going. You think that any of the wants the program to change? Not as long as they are making money. This isn’t Nazi Germany. These aren’t soilders taking orders. In fact, it is the rich ranchers that are giving the orders and paying lobbyiest to defend their position. These rich ranchers are involved in some serious fuckery of the tax payer.

Sorry this shit gets me all worked and fuming which puts me in a cussing kind of mood. I am so fumed up right that I think that I might become febrile. I am so fumed and febrile up that i am doing my best Frankenstein impression yet.

But because I am a such an upstanding citizen, a title awarded to me
because I didn’t steal from any tax payer, nor did I try to take advantage of them by being part of a government program that pays me a princely sum to take care of horses. All the while telling anyone who would listen that this is done in the interest of the mustangs. We are simply good people, who want nothing more than to care for these mustangs.

It has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to use public land space to graze our cattle, so that we don’t actually have to spend money to care for and feed our privately own cows, on our own lands. Why that would simply would cut into our profits.

No, no it has nothing to do with that, but all to do with our love of not only horse but also convoluted programs that make us rich. All to do with finding ways to capatilize our land holdings, cattle business , and on exploiting wild horse herds living on public lands.

Wait did I say that last part out loud? Our love of horses. That is what it
is all about. Nothing more, nothing less. Can’t a man be free to share his thoughts about his passion and love of the noble equine, as well as,
his love and passion of money? Stacks, and stacks, and stacks of free money. I mean horses and chaps and riding the range and being a cowboy.

Well anyway. Thinking about all of this has me doing my best Frankenstein impression and because I am a concerned citizen and all about being green, I am also heating up the milk for my latte from the
steam pouring from my temple. The milk is local. From my lactating breast. See isn’t all that hard to be a good person. First. Don’t steal. Second. Go green and buy local.

anon:

This is a serious question, and not intended to be malicious: Do you pay “use tax” on all your internet purchases that don’t collect sales tax? I know I don’t and I suppose that is a form of taking advantage of taxpayers.

Bridget:

I often shop in Delware that doesn’t have a sales tax, so I guess that is pretty much the same thing. When I start getting away with not having to pay millions and millions of dollars in sales tax then I will feel like I have taken advantage of taxpayers.

anon:

Multiply what you do by the millions and millions of Americans that do the same thing…

I don’t see that as the same thing. The state of Delaware chooses to charge no sales tax. The free market enables people to choose (or not) to shop in the state. It’s no different than sales tax free periods in various states, including Florida, where certain categories of items are deemed nontaxable during that period. It does not means that people are taking taxpayer dollars out of anyone’s pocket by buying items that are categorized as tax-free. The state has deemed that there are to be no taxes on those products. And to top it off, this is at the state, not federal, level. It is far easier for me, if I wanted, to lobby the state on behalf of my fellow residents to reduce or stop this practice than it is to effect change on the national level for something that benefits states (and residents in those states) other than my own.

anon:

The original comment dealt with people avoiding “use tax” on internet purchases, not on shopping in states that have no sales tax. The bottom line is: what Ladd Drummond and his ilk do is perfectly legal, and what the rest of us (at least those that don’t pay their state the proper use tax on internet purchases) is not.

Bridget:

I am not trying to be smart, but if it is illegal to not pay sales tax on internet purchases then why is it allowed to happen? I am sure that the government has ways to regulate this. I know that there are ways around government regulations such as in the case of online poker, but most people don’t expend the energy needed to find the loop hole. Plus I often see tax added to most of my internet purchases.

anon:

Bridget – If the store you purchase from over the internet has a brick and mortar presence in your state, they are required to collect sales tax on the purchase. If they do not have a presence, then they do not have to collect sales tax. In those instances the purchaser is supposed to pay a “use tax” to their state. This is almost impossible for states to police because it would cost more than it is worth to go after the guilty individuals. I think the link can explain it better than me…

Not paying use tax is not necessarily illegal. There are a variety of exemptions based on what each state’s statute defines, but virtually every one has a casual sales exemption for items not specifically taxed due to brick and mortar presence in the destination state (i.e., purchases by individuals not in the course of ordinary business). In addition, most states have a laundry list of exemption of types of goods as well. The law varies so widely by locale that blanketing every single instance where someone does not pay a use tax on something purchased over the internet as illegal is vastly overstating things.

anon:

Not paying a required use tax is indeed illegal. While there may be loopholes in state tax laws, I think you give a bit too much credit to states and sales tax exemptions.

What I am saying, for the pedantic, is that your blanket application of “use tax” to everything is not necessarily the case. If there is no use tax on an item I purchase, or if tax is collected on the seller’s end regardless of their having a brick and mortar location local to me, I am not required to pay any: ergo, not paying use tax in those cases is not, in fact, illegal. My issue is with your categorization of any Internet-based purchase requiring use tax when that is not the case. However, since you seem to be the armchair attorney who knows the ins and outs of every states’ requirements, I’ll bow to your superior knowledge on the subject and classification of everyone engaging in rampant local tax fraud.

anon:

Oddly enough, I do not know the ins and outs of every state, hence the link to someone who knows more than me. I never categorically said that every purchase done over the internet requires the payment of a use tax. Somehow you read that on your own. My point. for those stuck in gear, is that some purchases done over the internet do require payment of the tax, and few of us ever pay it, which is a form of taking advantage of taxpayers. Please re-read my response to Bridget and you will see that you reiterated my response. However, since you seem to be feeling a tad churlish, I’ll end.

LGirl:

I have wild bugs and birds living on my property ( A small city lot)… It’s like WILD Kingdom out thereI tell you. Where do I sign up for some sort of Financial assistance.

Shells:

So …. if I get this right …. I decide I want to raise cattle, but I don’t have a ranch, so I buy a herd and put it out on the public park in the middle of town. There are deer in that public park and they compete with the available grass so the town pays someone to catch the deer, transport them hundreds of miles away to a private park and then pay the private park owner to look after the deer. Meanwhile, I get to raise my cattle, pay minimal rent for the public park, sell the cattle for a profit and never have to worry about actually buying my own land to support them.

In the meantime the deer have been moved to a place where natural selection no longer takes place because someone is going to supply food and water for them, natural predators no longer exist properly because the private park is humanized and not like a normal wild setting. I make some attempts at deer birth control but it doesn’t really work all that well because someone forgot to explain it to the deer.

Only difference I can see is that the deer are not a protected species so no one would argue with having an open hunting season and culling the herds down to a workable size.

The wild mustangs in this case are not really WILD mustangs are they, they are semi-domesticated and the whole point of having the WILD mustangs a protected species becomes a lost point.

Off to buy a herd of cows and find me a park.

Kait:

Excellent Shells! Very well done! That should clear it all up if anyone is confused as to how stupid and wasteful it all is.

We have friends who were wheat farmers & subsidies thrived there, too. They were given government money to plant grasses that the birds could eat….

Mo:

I know some of the programs that pay farmers to do that are for ecological reasons, for example to help support an endangered species of bird that has highly important value in our food chain or something like that. I don’t have a problem with this when it makes sense and when there are good reasons to spend the country’s money, and when it’s not abused.

Kathy:

Heather,

No, I haven’t a clue what the cost would be to euthanize and dispose of a horse. Do you? I’d be interested in knowing, if you know…as a comparison.

Iona:

If they’re killed, they can be sold off to countries like France where horse meal is eaten and sold in butcher shops. Wild mustangs means organic horse meat right? Solves the population problem and brings in money to the government.

Anyway, even if he only made $100K from the BLM program, there’s less direct monetary rewards. The thousands of horses get photographed by PW, which helps build her “reputation” as a rancher’s wife, and also gives fodder to her blog, which brings in an estimated $1 million per year.

Dawn:

I couldn’t pay attention after seeing the Pickens woman; I kept backing up the video, her mouth! She could hardly move her lips. Botox much? Holy cow!

Sorry back to the subject now….

Shells:

LOL …. thats exactly what I thought Dawn. I wasn’t sure if she had an accent or couldn’t pronounce things because her face is so botoxed!

Kay in KCMO:

Does the Pickens woman have a vaguely British accent or does she sound that way because of the Botox? Man, that sounds/looks bizarre.

Rechelle:

I wondered the same thing Kay. Does having a tight immovable face cause a bad British accent? Or does a bad British accent cause a tight immovable face?

Bridget:

Reeecchelllly: I am feeling a bit silly this evening. (And you may just want to skip to the bottom because that is where I finally reach my point and ask my questions about the is Ree a man picture and about Pie Nether Regions Quivering Woman’s new outfit)

I blame the double dose of rechelleunplugged posts with a pie near woman twitter topping, a calc. test after being in school for only one week, having to go head to head with an 18 yr kid, who “graduated” from “homeschool” when he was 16, for an officers position on the honor society. Some how this dim bulb was made president of the honor society even though he lacks the ability to function in a social situation, talk to older woman with respect instead of distain, (his mother must be one scary over protecting bitch because this boy is afraid of smart women in their 30s), has no real leadership qualities, and he also doesn’t believe in evolution. Well this little fuckstick is standing in the way of me and a nice big scholarship, and he is making batty with frustration because I can’t just kick him in the nuts, call me a douche, and then call it a day. I wish Joel McHale would show up, so I would know that this isn’t my life and I am simply starring in a guest role on community.

See I told you that I was worked up this evening. I am zooming all over the place like I just did some lines of coke, choked down a bottle of the neighbor boy’s ritalin, and then mixed some no doze in with my espresso. But no not really. I am simply on the Toddlers and Tiaras diet of coke and/or mountain dew and foot long pixie sticks. Also my boyfriend has been gone for three weeks and I have no one in the house to talk to, so I am a bit stir crazy.

So anyway. I apologize for all of that. But what really has me all jacked up like a kid with severe ADD/ADHD that has been off her meds for weeks. Is that twitter picture of Ree, where she seriously looks like a man.

No, lie. It appears that Ree is sporting an Adam’s apple and she looks giant size next to the other woman. Not fat, but big with manly features. Maybe Ree was busy the day that the Ladies Home Journal came for a visit and to shoot some pictures, so instead of canceling the shoot. Ree suggested that they use her very own a drag queen impersonator as her stand in. That picture is almost, well sort of, it gets close to proving your theory that gay men from New York write her blog.

Also did that Pie Near filly get herself all dolled up and done up in a tutu? It sure do look new and it really brings out the color in her hair. After all no one knows how hard it is to buy clothes in flattering colors than the simply fabulous and fantastic, not to mention plastic, pie near woman. Its because her hair is red ya’ll, a lot of colors clash with her hair and her skin tone.

Rechelle:

Bridget – I am going to adopt you. You are funeee, funeee girl.

theresa:

I’m betting MM gave Ree a spankin’ for drawing attention to the Mustang/BLM contracts.

Rechelle:

I have to admire Ladd a little bit for being willing to let the reporters onto the ranch. Surely he knew he was going to be the subject of much derision. Maybe he doesn’t care or maybe it’s a tiny little cry for help. :)

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Buckee The Horse, Bailey Green. Bailey Green said: Wow! Marlboro Man and the mustangs make the news. Here's the video! http://bit.ly/hkeSTO @thepioneerwoman [...]

rozdabiker:

I’m pretty sure mustangs aren’t native to America. They are descended from horses brought in by the Spanish Conquistadors in the early 1500s. If left alone the herds would breed and multiply until they over run the public lands. Since they have no natural predators only starvation would reduce the size of the herds We, as citizens, have to decide if the mustangs are worth the price. If we can’t allow them to run completely free, and we don’t want to subsidize ranchers for their care, then what do we do? They aren’t native so there is a good argument for euthanization. On the other hand, animal lovers can make a good argument to preserve them because of their sheer beauty. Either way it is a hard decision and
not a problem that we are likely to solve on this blog. Can you imagine the uproar if the BLM decided to euthanize all 38,000 mustangs in the US?

jalf:

How do you get from “they aren’t native” to “they have no natural predators”? That’s a pretty big gap in your logic.

Do you have any evidence that they’d “multiply until they overrun the public lands”?

That is what has happened with *some* imported animals in some regions, sure, but you seem to be assuming that *every* animal which is not “native” will end up like that if not controlled.

And that’s just not true.

rozdabiker:

jalf…. I just wondered about the mustang issue so I googled it and read quite a few articles. I really don’t know if all I read is all true but the no natural predators statement came from one of those articles that said there aren’t enough wolves, grizzlies, or mountain lions in the west to control a breeding population of 38,000 mustangs. I ‘ve never seen a wild mustang running free or on a ranch but it’s on my bucket list. I hope the BLM can find a solution to the mustang problem that preserves them without bankrupting the taxpayer. Up here in Alaska we hear the same arguments (with a little different twist) about wolves and caribou. I love them both and hate to see either one controlled by hunts. They actually shoot the wolves from helicopters. Actually, jalf, I know hardly anything about the mustang problems and shouldn’t have put my two cents in.

Why not? You’re entitled to your opinion, just like everyone else. At least you did a bit of hunting around first. And it’s very likely true that the mustangs are descendants of horses brought to the Americas by Columbus and various conquistadors.

Based on what I found in some searching, the population of the wild mustangs/burros already exceeds sustainable levels by about 12K for the FY ending 2010, and without intervention, herds can grow at a rate of 20% per year, resulting in the doubling of the population every four years.

I was talking with my mom about the very example you used: caribou and wolves. I’m all for conservation, but there are responsible ways to deal with the population other than warehousing as many of the animals on private land, for a fee, as there are on public lands, I would think.

Bridget:

I was working under the some wrong assumptions. I thought that at some point the land would run out of grasses that feed the mustangs which would control their population numbers, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. I wasn’t even thinking about native predators. I have read that the wolf population is growing and I could imagine the horse being a prey animal for the wolf, but that may be a long shot as well. I do know that birth control has been put in with the food to keep the mustang population under control. I agree with you that there are responsible ways to deal with the over population of mustangs other than warehousing the animals.

jalf:

Well, you might be right. Like I said, it’s happened before with other animals. I’m sorry my post sounded harsher than intended, I was really just interested in whether you were guessing (which is fair, because so am I), or if you had any actual knowledge in the area.

I’m not an expert, but I have a hard time imagining horses breeding out of control. They’re pretty limited in their diet, which puts an upper bound on the population, and they do have predators.

So it seems to me that without intervention, the population would stabilize at some point. It might be higher or lower than its current level, and it might give a few other species a hard time, but it doesn’t seem like something that’d spiral completely out of control and wreck the entire ecosystem, the way some imported animals have done.

But, like I said, just guessing.

JJ:

We have the problem of an increase of deer in our area from time to time on public lands- of course they easily solve that by opening those lands to hunting when they get out of control. No one wants to hunt mustangs so that easy option is out!. However, the mountain lion is the most common predator and it has plenty of choices for its dinner – deer, moose, and even cattle – which I’m sure makes the ranchers not like them very much either. Okay they could put the mustangs and some mountain lions together – okay that is not a pretty picture…
They did hunt wild mustangs before – from airplanes no less – and use the meat for PET FOOD. Could you imagine the uproar from pet owners today! Each action does cause a reaction in areas unforeseen.
It sounds like it started out as a good idea ( Save the Mustangs!) and then got mixed up in the crazy, greedy way government issues do. Of course it should be evened out and the cattle ranchers should at least pay equal cost for grazing on public lands – if not they have to share it with the mustangs.

Today Rob and I were just talking about people who have money and how we wonder when is enough money, enough. Seriously, can’t Pickens wife just donate the land?! Why does she need to be paid? Obviously to pay her plastic surgeon, who should be shot! And Mr. Drummond you are taking money from We, the people. And you are taking that money to pay for renovations or whatever else your prima donna wife needs to stay in the country. I’m thoroughly disgusted and will be contacting my congressman to hopefully stop paying rich people my tax dollars when We, the people are in debt up to our eyeballs!

JJ:

She did donate the land. However – there is – even for a horse sanctuary – upkeep for the horses and land. But I do agree she should get a new surgeon…

taylor5622:

Rechelle, would it be possible for you to post the phone number for the congressional delegation referred to at the end of the video? Hell, I’ll give them a call. This is a debacle that needs to be exposed. I’d never heard of it until I started reading you and The Pioneer Woman Sux. But then I didn’t forego city living so I could live in the country and write an effin’ fairy tale blog.

FINALLY! Pioneer WoMAN has something to blog about other than butter! Her husband made the news! But wait……are those crickets I hear? Not one mention from the multi faceted marketing machine called PW.com? MM gets nary a blog posting that he was on the news looking like a wild mare caught in a pickup truck’s headlights? Where’s the love now for her MM? He showed his ass….in his chaps! What more does she want? Poor MM, he gets the boot from the blog while gREEd trots out poor Charlie again. This time Charlie is looking at a cow.

MM states,

“It’s hard to make a livin’”????? WTF? These Drummonds have some kind of balls. Hard to make a livin’ my ass. Who does he think he is kidding? In my opinion MM and his fellow ranchers spend more than he claims he makes for their lobbyist in DC. “It’s hard to make a livin’”! Now I have heard it all. Don’t forget all the blogging his brand wife does about this topic. She always “forgets” about that tax payer money they get for the shiny, pretty horses. All she has to do is flash some shiny mares in front of the school of fish that swim after her and everyone is so happy and distracted by the shiny pretty horses! Not only are the tax payers being ripped off so are her readers. They just clap and clap and click and click. The Drummonds are really soaking those mustangs for all they are worth. They remind me of snake oil salesmen.

I am thrilled that this topic is on the news and the tax payers can learn all about it. I wonder what brought this to light now. It has been going on for years and years. However it happened I am thrilled to see this topic being questioned.

TBone’s wife should have kept her weird mouth shut. Who do these people think we are? Their subjects? It’s her husband’s money, not hers? WTF?

Want to really creep yourself out? Imagine PW and Mrs. “It’s not my money, it’s my husband’s money” having a chat about the BLM. Can you imagine those two voices together?

Shutter….

lindsey:

as far as the wild horses overrunning public lands… well, they basically are at this point. the “natural predators” of mustangs used to be the ranchers that would kill them to keep them off either their land or the public lands that they graze cattle on. the BLM feels that if they don’t relocate the horses, they will have to euthanize them- and both options are going to face opposition- so I think they are taking the “easy” way out- they would rather be accused of wasting money paying the ranchers to house the horses rather than be accused of murdering mustangs.

All PW feelings aside, I am kind of torn between which I think is a better option. Controlling the species with birth control is absolutely essential, but I also do not think I could support mass euthanasia.

lindsey:

sorry that was supposed to be a response to rozdabiker and jalf

Rechelle:

Yes – I think a mass horse extermination would just be plain weird. I guess it isn’t any different than slaughtering cows or chickens, but it feels kind of different. Makes me glad I am a vegetarian (heh heh).

Shells:

I accidentally ate horse this summer in France. I don’t support a mass cull either …. we have a different relationship with horses here, as things of majesty and beauty as opposed to being things for lunch. Similar to how dogs are viewed in some countrys. I look at my Great Dane and think he would feed a lot of people.

Diane Tulsa:

Boone Pickens’ wife is originally from Iran, hence the accent.

Bridget:

People in India have a different relationship with cows and go so far as giving them pain medicine which had a long term effect on the birds that lived near by. The birds were eating the meat off dead carcasses and the pain medicine was making their shells so brittle that they vulture population declined by nearly 90%. Hindus will not kill any of their cows and need the vulture to come and eat the dead cows. Will since there weren’t enough vultures dead cows began to pile up in the streets, so the people did something that they never thought they could, something that they never saw as an option and they stopped giving the cows pain killers.

Now this story doesn’t exactly parallel what is going on here, but sometimes one of the solutions to a problem is going to see impossible or downright horrible. As it was to the people who had to stop giving their cows pain medication. There are too many horses. They are starting to become a pest and are starting to over run and tax the available resources which is very similar to the behavior of invasive species. What does the government do with these species? It looks towards way of eliminating those species.

Every species plays an important role in maintaining a healthy and balanced ecosystem, and every species on the planet is a unqiue product of millions of years adpatation and evolution. Most organisms on this planet have existed long before humans had evovled, and should be protected from elimination at the hands of human beings.

That being said the cattle that we currently raise are so far from wild cattle that actually evolved due to natural selection and our current cattle have evolved through human selection, and only play a role in our food web. The horses through no fault of their own have grow in population size beyond what the land can provide. In time, if the horse were just left to graze public land then their numbers would start to dwindle as most would die of starvation and there would be fewer that would be able to reproduce or be able to support new life.

I think in this case that people are going to need to look beyond their personal attachment to what they think the animal stands for. It isn’t any different than the slaughtering of a cow, a chicken, or a pig and if you support that than a horse is no different. Read about the pig. Pigs are incredible animals, incredibly smart, capable of learning, they crave human contact, they practice long term care of their young, their DNA is 98% similar to human DNA, but most people don’t see a problem with killing them.

I don’t eat meat because I don’t believe in the mass killing of any animal and I don’t believe in selective breeding that does things like turning chickens into animals that can no longer walk, so that people can have bigger thighs when they buy that chicken at the supermarket.

As unpleasant as it may seem to me. I understand why these animals are killed because they supply a food source for a majority of people. Killing the horse seems unpleasant, but it would serve a purpose. Killing some horses now would be in the best interest of everyone especially the horses since they would be returned to a population level that the land could support. Also the government would have to pay out less money for their care.

It is funny. Thousands of insects, fungi, and plants are eradicated on a daily basis by the government and even though this destruction has a serious impact on bio-diversity. (Preserving the planet’s bio-diversity is just as important, if not more so, then finding solutions to climate change. The health of our planet is directly tied to the to the biological diversity of ecosystems, plants, animals, insects, and fungi and everyday there is less and less bio-diversity). But as soon as some people talk about killing the cute animals or the majestic animals, only then do people speak up and protest.

They aren’t suggesting killing off all of the horses, but instead want to cull the herds to more manageable levels. That seems like one of the better solutions presented so far. I for one would like to stop seeing tax dollars wasted in the care of these animals when there is already public land space for them.

What is a few dead horse compared to the thousand of animals that are slaughtered daily? Or all the fish that are killed through mass harvesting methods, so that McDonald’s can serve its filet o fish? It is a terrible sin that humans have become the stewards of the land because we are destroying it at every turn, but on occasion management of a species becomes necessary and I think the horse are one such example of this.

Jennine:

May the shits of 3,400 wild mustangs land on P-Dub’s porch.

Andrea:

As someone with two horses on three acres: 1/2 acre per horse would not work. Unless your horses are so small they are plastic and photographed on this blog. Then you could probably have 3400! I back up Heather’s $$ numbers. My two are like 4-legged boats (endless moneypits). And I live in a temperate climate with no snow so technically have a bit more grass than Okla. We also pay $800 a year in feed per horse.
I always think attitudes about wild horses are variant on where you live. The mustangs (and most critters) have always been exterminated when they come in conflict with human needs and $$ whether that be land for sheep, cows,crops. If we ate them, so they had a cash value in our society, no one would be fussing about all of this.

Insomnia You Nasty Bitch:

But speaking of cows because the Pioneer Woman sure was. Here are some of the highlights.

This was written by Pub herself:

“Yesterday morning, fence lined this road. This morning, the fence is gone!It’s too bad cattle can’t be trusted to stay in their respective pastures. I kind of like the fenceless look myself. But ever since cattle fell from grace…Well, let’s just say fences are necessary.”

It give her the benefit of the doubt she could be joking when she said this. Trying her hand at some of her wacky random humor that she is so fond of. On the other hand if she even slightly believes this then she is a bigger wack job than I thought. Yes, it is the sinful nature of cattle that makes fences is necessary. It could have anything to do with the fact that it is in their nature to wander and travel around as a herd. I am sure that all her religious fans got a kick out of this statement and probably agreed with her.

That is why religious fanatics drive me up the wall. Every action and behavior in some way has to be attributed to God. God must have cured that little boy, that person must be sinning or behaving in ways unpleasing to the lord and that is why they act that way, god answered our prayers and now we are pregnant.

Screw trying to explain the world through science which has study and test the natural world to understand the hows and whys of the natural world. Screw saying that it is simply the way that nature works. Or even saying that there isn’t a reason for why something did or didn’t happen. Nope. God is the reason for everything on this planet. We don’t need science, we have god. Years from now, people are going to laugh at the fact that we are still debating evolution and attributing perceived bad behavior to a person’s sinful nature, or that people fought over the morality of stem cell research.

Freedom from the Matrix:

This comment comes from the post with that features a group of mustangs on a snowy field as the sun is either rising or setting. She has posted it a million times, but it still gets everyone’s panties all wet forcing them to gush at the beauty of the same old photo. But the best comment comes from an astute reader who has this to say about MM and his home for wayward mustangs:

“Hope your baby is feeling better. OH btw, we were watching the channel 6 news last night and who did I see on there, none other then Marlboro Man himself. He did a good job =). I think it’s a great thing y’all do for the wild mustangs and to be able to see them every day is wonderful. They are beautiful creatures. Have a great day.”

So people are buying the lies she is selling.

I seriously think that it is time to start figuring out a way that we can go and retrieve these people from the matrix. We will give them a choice between the blue or red pill, we won’t force them to stop believing the fabrication. But we could offer freedom to those that want it. Freedom from the Pdub machine. Who knows they also might break free of believing Fox News and buying any book endorsed by Oprah. It could be the start of something big.

Samantha:

Strange how PW didn’t mention MM being on the news….I mean I think there was camera shot of his magnificent ass so why didn’t she mention it on her blog?

I do think the PW does joke a lot in her posts unfortunately I don’t think many get her kind of humor and take her literally. I also think she has an underlining mean streak to her.

Ladies Home Journal has a youtube of her making mac and cheese…yes mac and cheese. Very uncomfortable to watch…it is never about the food/recipe with her,in my opinion, that is just a backdrop for her to be on camera..I don’t think she cares what she is doing as long as she is on camera……I cringe at the thought of how unaware she really is….

Bridget:

I thought that it was strange that Ree didn’t mention MM being on the news too. She never misses a chance to talk about anytime she is on a television show or appears in a magazine. You know when she does the whole don’t look at me, I am hedious bit, but here is a listing of when the show will be on, and here is a link to the video in case you missed, and here is where you can order the DVD highlight reel of all my appearances. But seriously. Ya’ll are interested in watching me with my armpits gushing and my spanx shrouded body because there is nothing that I hate more than being in front of a camera.

The most hilarious part of the mac & cheese video. Is not her immovable face, but the fact that she has to throw in that she is just keeping it real and being honest. Just in case we forgot. Ree keeps it real.

farmgirl:

Why blame the rancher for taking the work and the money when its the stupid government that comes up with the plan? If they want the mustangs fed and he has the ability to do it—-Ladd didn’t set the price–he took the job–it’s your government in action folks!

jalf:

Why wouldn’t you blame both? Why is it acceptable to leech off government/tax money, but not acceptable for the government to allow it?

Paula:

I agree with farmgirl. I love my country but I am sickened by the spending! IF this family didn’t take the money offered don’t you agree that SOMEONE else would? Heck, IF I had the land I would find it hard to turn down that kind of money!

Lori:

The horses worked out well, didn’t they?
Thank God for Christmas clearance at the local feed store.
Don’t ask me what the chinese BLM brand marks stands for cause I don’t know.

I don’t know where Ladd is getting his cost figures. I would like to see his books and the line items and why he ONLY gets a hundred grand out of feeding 3400 (THIRTY FOUR HUNDRED!!!!!!??????) horses. (ONLY 100 GRAND?!?!?!)

Perhaps he buys new haying equipment every year?
A big horse powered tractor can cost anywhere from $50,000 to over a hundred grand (or more) as can a swather and a baler. Could be this is what he does, then uses the equipment to hay the rest of the place for hay to feed his cattle. A block of salt is something like $2.50 if you buy one, $4 if it has mineral in it. Of course, it takes far more than one block of salt to keep 3400 (THIRTY FOUR HUNDRED?????!!!!!) horses healthy so assume he buys six or seven ton of blocks a year. Do the math. No. Really. Do the math cause I can’t add or multiply worth squat. Perhaps he is figuring in his inflated labor with his time consuming, time mismanagement feeding methods into the equation? My opinion says he is.
Don’t forget folks, all this stuff he buys for the horses are completely and totally tax deductible. A couple of new tractors/swathers/rakes (which needs it’s own tractor), balers, flatbeds and pickups, as well as metal buildings for hay storage) every year or so is a rancher’s tax deduction dream! And it’s all legitimate. I’m not saying that’s what the Drummonds do but I am also saying I’m not buying into the expenses he claims he has in feeding wild horses. Maybe his electric bill to pump water is exorbitant? Or isn’t that what windmills are for?

Now let’s talk about cattle grazing on public lands.

Yes. An AUM (cow calf pair or ONE bull, of which you must have one to ten cow ratio) costs $1.30 (this figure may be incorrect Rechelle. I believe it has gone up to $1.35) to run on public grounds. That is the smallest of the rancher’s cost to use a renewable resource (Grass) on public grounds. The biggest cost to the rancher are the herder(s) or which you need at least one per four hundred head of cows (this isn’t in any book, just something I’ve learned over the years watching my family graze public lands); more if the allotment is bigger. (More on allotments later.) The second biggest cost is in providing manpower and equipment improving/building springs, culverts, fences and roads. This figure varies from year to year (or from week to week depending on what goes wrong where). Fencing off the allotments is another huge expense as well as a time consuming task for ranchers. (The fences go down in the winter to protect the wildlife then have to be reconstructed in the spring to contain the cattle.) Then you figure in the cost of ibuprofen needed to deal with the headaches the federal bureaucrats who just graduated from grazing school at a highly recommended university back east where there is no renewable resources and no cows or cowboys to keep them in leather and the turf in the surf and turf menu item as well as hamburgers,meatloaf, etc. (Sorry for the sarcasm. I just could not help myself. It’s hard being judged/managed by people who are so far removed from our lives and of how those people can affect our lives and livelihoods.)
So in actuality, it costs a rancher more like $12 to $13 (or more if the fences go down more than usual or a spring or road or culvert washes out) month to run one cow/calf pair, bull or yearly; substantially more than the federal brochures will lead you to believe.
One thing I would really like to stress is that grass is a RENEWABLE RESOURCE. It can be eaten down/mowed down and it GROWS BACK. Please. Keep this is mind. Grass is forever.

What is an allotment?
Each grazing area has grazing allotments. In other words, depending upon how many permittees (or ranchers) graze on on any size portion of federal land (which, and I don’t want to pick a fight here or make an enemy, belongs to the ranchers too……..) has so many allotments. Cattle are grazed on each allotment for a certain amount of time then the cattle are moved to another allotment to allow the grass in the first allotment to grow back. The allotments are fenced off to keep the cattle where they belong. (Some times cows don’t know where they belong; they don’t understand boundaries and this is where your very expensive herders come into play…they keep the cattle in the correct allotment no matter how many times a week (or day) it takes to get it done.) One allotment in each grazing area is rested (Cows do not graze in that area) every year and no allotment is ever grazed twice in one year. The Forest Service and the BLM have very strict policies permittees must follow; turn out dates are based on if the grass is growing well enough to sustain grazing) and cows must be off public grounds before the big wild life hunts. We also keep cattle off the river and stream beds for riparian issues as well as to accommodate campers and fishers. Again, cows don’t know how to read and don’t always stay where they belong and this is when our highly paid herders earn their money. We do are best, really.

Why are there even cows on public lands?
Remember the land rush in the 1800s? Where anyone could claim
acreage for their own? This was done because Washington needed a tax base to run the country. Farmers and ranchers needed land to make a living and pay taxes. Nearly all homesteaded places are not capable of supporting a family year round. In other words, in the summer, the pastures, meadows, etc. had to be cattle and sheep free so the grass could grow and harvested for hay to feed animals during the winter. In order to keep their animals (and make a living and pay taxes) the ranchers and farmers needed somewhere to summer their animals. In the 1940s the Taylor Grazing act was created which allowed homestead(ed) land owners to run, on public ground, animals (sheep and cattle) to graze. The rules were the ranchers had to pay aum fees, make improvements upon public lands (just as they had to on homesteaded ground or in other words, treat public ground as if it were their own, which it is….) and the the number of permits issued are based on home much homesteaded ground the rancher owned. They were called grazing rights and if a guy sold his ranch his grazing rights went with the place; they were an asset. And a rancher had to turn only his cattle (branded and marked) out on his allotment. In the fifties there was abuse to public lands but the smart cowboys figured out if they DID NOT TAKE CARE OF PUBLIC LAND AS IF IT WERE THEIR OWN (which it is) THERE WOULD BE NO PLACE TO TAKE THEIR CATTLE IN THE SUMMER and they would be out of business. (sorry about the yelling.. I really want to make the point that we take very good care of public grounds because without it, unlike Ladd Drummond, we would be on the unemployment roles wondering what the hell to do now because we really don’t know how to do anything else but take care of cows. )

Okay.
Help me off my soapbox and I’ll go do some proofreading.
Feel free to fix my grammar errors Rechelle….LOL
I’d tell you I loved you more than my luggage but my luggage sucks because it was a high school graduation present in 1975.

Rechelle:

I was hoping you would chime in Lori. I’ll study on your comment when I get back from Jack’s spelling bee.

JJ:

Very interesting info Lori – there is always more to the story – thank you for sharing!

Rechelle:

Lori – I just read through your comment. Thank you so much for giving the ranching perspective on this issue. I really appreciate your input and the information you provide.

A lot of the mustang activist sites that I have read over the past few weeks imply that most of the cattle grazing on public land is done by large cattle corporations and not family ranches. Is that true in your experience?

Little Apple:

I’m still out on the wild horse issue… I know leaving them all out on the range is not the answer. Nor is “taking care” of the excess until they die of natural causes. That leaves an unpopular alternative but if we have to interfere with nature, perhaps we should take a few lessons from nature.
As to the folks who are currently taking care of them –
Do you know how many acres it takes to handle them?
How many miles of fence to contain them?
The cost of building said fence?
The taxes on the land to handle them?
The water source for them?
The cost of well, or windmill, or pond building, or whatever?
And what about vet services for injured and ailing animals?
And then there is interest on land notes if applicable.
Also, I haven’t heard of any cattle ranchers getting rich while running cattle on government range.

Nancy:

I’m an animal lover, but gahhhhhh! Millions and millions and millions spent to let wild animals be wild on someone’s land, but money for education and healthcare is hard to come by. No one would give a flip about these wild animals if they weren’t pretty. Can you imagine if BLM was coughing up millions for ranchers to graze skunks or possums? Citizens are going without basics while the Drummonds line their pockets at our expense.

Lori:

Rechelle,
In answer to your questions about small family ranches vs large corporations on Public Lands: No.
I do not know of a large corporation using public lands for grazing.
There are some big family owned ranches who have grazing rights but their homesteads are 150 years old and nothing lasts for 150 years if you don’t take care of it.

I am not sure about the acreage need per horse.
I will be attending some range seminars in the next few months and know many people who can answer this question. When I do get answers, I will let you know.

Something else I feel is important the public know, is that the horses on public and private land are not wild. Until Cortez came to the Americas with his twelve spanish mustangs in the 1400 there were no horses in northern america. In the centuries since the horses have been left for wild but they are not indigeness (SP) such as the elk, deer, buffalo, etc.

lindsey:

As far as the cattle corps vs. family ranches grazing- from what information i could find, it did seem to me that the majority of grazers on public property had to be smaller operations- seemed like they had expanded in size of their herds, but could not actually afford the money to buy the land (especially in areas of california and nevada where the cost of land is really high), so public grazing was made available to them.

Read the above blog.
It is written by a young woman, Melissa Davies.
Missy is very well educated and well spoken on matters regarding cattle public land use and wild horses among other things.
She is an excellent source of education.

Laura:

Seriously, I just looked at the youtube video from the Ladies Home Journal of Ree making mac and cheese-

and Holy Botox Batman! Her forehead doesn’t move at all! She tries so hard to be likable, but she’s just such a nervous wreck- spilling milk, rambling on like it’s the first time she’s spoken to a human in years, trying desperately to raise her eyebrows and show some emotion, that creepy ‘look at me’ dance when she finally runs out of things to say.

I love me a good trainwreck, and I feel like she’s going to have a full-on breakdown soon. I wonder how she’ll deal with this mustang story, or if she just glosses over/ignores the less than sunny side of things…

Anon.:

Wow, you’re right! Her forehead crease is missing, and the eyebrows are weird. So that’s where the money from the horses goes!

Remember that puppet from the 70′s and 80′s, Madame? Ree’s eyebrows remind me of Madame. And that’s not a good thing. I don’t like commenting about someone’s physical appearance, but she went too far with the botox or something. It looks painful.

Barb:

Yikes! She used to make fun of herself having the lines, calling herself an “eleven.” (I have the same annoying lines). Wonder if she’ll point out on her website that those lines are now gone? Anyone else figure The Food Network is gearing her up for her own show?

taylor5622:

Either Food Network or Netflix. Ever since she ceased tweeting about her “febrile” child, she’s been recommending movies on Twitter. Gag me please. Since when has Ree Drummond become a film critic?

Actually, I’m awaiting the announcement for her line of Pioneer Woman Cookware coming to a store near me. No thanks!

Barb:

I’m wondering who she is sleeping with to be getting so much exposure. My SIL gave me a year’s subscription to Better Homes and Gardens (not sure why, must have been a freebie giveaway). Now, the most I have ever read BH&G is flipping through it at a doctor’s office. I get the February issue the other day and decide to sit down after supper with a cup of coffee and actually take my time and go through it. The mag has been around for 89 years so it must be good, right?

But I digress….on page 20 is, what I guess to be a regular feature…Three things to do this month, something along those lines. One of the items on there was “for a good read” purchase Ree’s new Black Heels book. Are you kidding me? Can I not escape her anywhere? Of all the books out there to pick, they pick that one?

I’m certain she won the throwdown with Bobby Flay to get people more interested in her, thus the cooking show can’t be far off, and taylor, you are probably right – Pioneer Woman Cookware.

Stacia:

I don’t doubt that she will be coming out with her very own line of cookware or her own Food Network show. The stage has been set. Throwdown with Bobby Flay and the response she got with it pretty much cemented that. Plus let’s not forget her glowing testimonials about the Lodge Cast Iron Skillets in the Chefs Catalog from last fall (I can imagine a partnership with them). It’s really all about whether she wants to spend the rest of her time with a cooking show (which can conveniently be filmed at the lodge) or if she wants to continue with her books and tour from time to time. We’ll find out eventually.

For those of you baffled by her rise to stardom, the secret behind Ree’s success, other than her very popular blog and related cookbook, is her very damn good PUBLICIST. This I know, because I myself am a publicist (not hers to make that clear) and I know how all this The View, Food Network, Ladies Home Journal, Southern Living, BH&G appearances work. This media overload wouldn’t be happening without one of the people in my field. Yes, she is a popular blogger, but let’s face it, until the book tour and those television interviews started…no one other than internet recipe surfers, blog readers or mommy bloggers knew who she was…which until this day is a suprisingly small number for the amount of people who have internet access.

For this, I apologize.

Barb:

God help us if Oprah gets ahold of her!

Anon.:

You can check out the 11′s on her old face. She even points out that she didn’t use botox – back then:

the link is dead but I remember what you are speaking of.
PW said MM wouldn’t ALLOW her to have botox.
After hearing his voice on the channel six news clip I can imagine him forbidding just about anyone to do anything. No wonder his kids don’t go to school.

Ashley:

BLM profits have been injected into her face!! She was not aging well and now all her mouth and forehead lines are gone a la fillers and botox. I guess since The Lodge remodel is finished all that extra cash had to go somewhere…

Carol the Long winded:

as a Nevadan, I say: let the horses be hunted. This weird sentimental attachment to a non native species is costing NV a ton of money, and threatening our native animals. Sell hunting licenses. Export the meat. Yes, PETA, I will be awaiting your call.
Don’t get me started on this public land bullshit.
And if I am paying Mr. Drummond, and I am, as a taxpayer, I have every fucking right to see his expense/income sheet…not to mention child labor infractions.
But I do not ever need to see his ass again.

JudyB:

child labor infractions…bull. Generally, if you grow up on a farm, that’s just part of the deal—you do work with the family at an early age. Much better situation than children raised by parents who are afraid to let their children go out and play, much less participate in the work and make a contribution to the family. Those children will have so much more self-confidence than the kids who all get a trophy just for participating in a sport or club.

Bridget:

Couldn’t agree with you more, Long Winded Carol. Who is anything but. Let the horses be hunted or at least culled and reduced in number. Sentimental attachment is getting in the way of common sense and proper management of this problem. The government is constantly cutting spending that goes towards education, the arts, and science/research due in part to the current economy and because of political reasons (the religious right). But yet the government has no problem continuing to spend money towards nonsense like these mustangs. Sure the money spent is a drop in the bucket compared to other expenses, but it is money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Yes, children do work on farms, as is the nature of the beast. I’m not sure how much “down time” the Drummond children get, but I hope they get plenty. My husband didn’t grow up on a farm, but he was expected to work in his family’s business from a young age & now, even on vacation, has a difficult time relaxing & feels he missed out a lot on childhood.

Carol the Long winded:

Can I make my children get up at 4 am and work for me for 4 or 5 hours on my for profit business (regardless of what it is)? No. So why is farmwork special? And dangerous work to boot? Well, I guess they are working for free, so its indentured servitude.

My father was a farm boy and my grandmother a migrant worker. This didn’t make them more self confident than my mother or other grand parents who weren’t child laborers (I don’t think there is anything wrong with a child contributing to his family but if the child is doing the same work as hired laborers, than can we call a spade a spade? Those kids are cowhands.)

And why the hell can’t Ree have chickens? You know how difficult chickens are…they AREN”T. We have 5 hens. Easy peasy. My kids take care of them and sell the eggs. But that’s a heck of a lot different than being in a cow chute at 5 am.

I agree, Carol, those children shouldn’t be out working cattle, they’re just too young! It seems that they could also be missing out on just being kids! My stars, kids grow up fast enough to begin with without having to go into ranching at a such a young age.

Yeah, chickens are soooo easy. We had them when I was a kid & it was our job, too, to feed them & then we got to sell the eggs (in my day & age, 50¢ a dozen) AND keep the money! You’re right, a lot different than rousing kids to be at work at 5 in the morning!

Samantha:

Did you ever consider that maybe the Drummond kids only work during PW photo shoots? I wonder how much they actually do work with the animals and ranch chores.

taylor5622:

Ree Drummond probably uses the BLM income in part to fund her Photography and Photoshop addiction. When she posts photos of the Mustangs on her blog, she garners sympathy and support from animal rights activists. Those same activists influence their representatives to pass legislation favorable to these horses ultimately benefiting Ree.

Mustangs + Drummond land = Big Fat Government Check

Then, Ree’s wise CPA writes off the cameras and software as a business expense. Do these people pay for anything?

A bit of clarification: in 1971 the Wild Horses and Burros act was amended, and explicitly states that euthanasia is an acceptable form of control. However, the BLM has just as explicitly said they have no intention of using this form of control (which begs the question of why that portion of the amended act would be implemented in the first place). I find it incredibly strange that other species, when they overrun sustainable numbers even with natural predators (deer, caribou) or without (wolves, coyotes) can be hunted via permit, yet we have this strange fascination with horses that precludes removing members from the herd in a humane manner.

But, if you listen to Ladd he very clearly tells you that the ONLY thing they do for the animals is EXTRA feed in the winter and salt and minerals and that they pretty much, “take care of themselves”. So, he is not spending money each and every day on hay, or vet visits. When they can’t find as much to eat on their own in the winter he supplements with extra hay. He also very clearly states that the HORSES not the CATTLE are they way they earn their money.

Obviously they are not living as lavishly as they do on $100,000 a year. It’s absurd to even think that they could maintain their lifestyle on that paltry sum. No, they are throwing some hay out a few times a year and some salt and minerals a few times a year and are not spending almost ALL of the money on those horses. Come on, give me a break.

I just watched the news clip.
You, my friend Rechelle, have struck nerve in the Oklahoma news world!

These horses are not wild animals.
Elk, deer, moose, etc. are and guess what? When their numbers get higher than what can support then, more hunting permits are issued.
Now, I’m not advocating selling permits to shoot a horse, far from it.
What I’m sayin in WHY in the world are these animals even looked upon as being wild and treated as such.
Wild horses are great. The film clips from the Oklahoma news show was great and I hear once you’ve run wild horses you’re never the same. Wild horses belong in American history (remember cortez and how he left horses here after he came to the americas?). But in reasonable numbers.
My thought is to spay 90 percent of the mares and leave the most desirable (healthy, young, structurally sound, etc.) mares intact. Then geld 95 of the mares. This will naturally bring down the number of wild horses and the process should be repeated every five….ten? years. For now, I believe the old, the thin, the structurally unsound and unhealthy should be exported to Canada or Mexico where there are kill plants and the meat is sent to Europe where there is a market for horse meat.
The reason the horse population has exploded to unmanageable numbers is because the US Government shut down horse kill plants and with it, shut down horse meat export opportunities.
I’m an animal lover. I’ve put many horses down and I’ve seen hurt and ill horses shot. I cried until the deed was done because I knew there was no way I could properly care for those horses or bring them back to health. Euthanization takes longer than a shot to the head and I’m not sure a horse suffers less, having seen both methods.

At any rate, the 20,000 acres the botox lady bought will need government subsizing because, well, not enough feed grows in those Nevada mountains to feed many horses. However, I believe she will be buying hay to feed her horses; Ladd Drummond puts up his own hay which cheapens the cost considerably.

Gotta go folks and pick up some horses.
Ironically we are adding two more horses to our herd of 18 today.

Samantha:

A bit OT but I’m curious, why aren’t more ranchers in that area raising bison? It is healthier meat and aren’t bison indigenous (y’know before they were slaughtered to near extinction to destroy the Native American’s way of life) to Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and so on? Seems a no-brainer if you care about keeping the land as natural as possible.

Rechelle:

Probably because very few people in America are interested in eating bison meat. I will say though – that in my part of Kansas there are at least two bison ranchers near me. I like bison burgers, but have yet to master how to make a bison roast. It’s tricky because the meat is so lean. Bison meat is very healthy as far as meat goes.

It’s catching on. I read an article somewhere in my travels the other day about the price of bison meat going up due to demand. I love it, myself, especially braised as a roast. Mighty tasty stuff. One of my nearest neighbors has an ostrich penned away from the horses and cattle he runs, and I’m always wondering if he’s raising it for the meat.

FLFarmer, would you please share your recipe for braised bison roast? We’ve only had steaks & ‘burger, but I would love to try a roast.

We’ve had ostrich before – I like it in fajitas instead of the usual chicken, pork or beef. You have to be real careful not to over cook it, too, as it’s so lean, otherwise it gets tough.

I love elk meat as well, & I believe it’s slightly leaner than bison. It’s hard to come by though, unless you know a successful hunter. It’s very expensive to mail order it. One of my favorite places to eat when we’re traveling, is The Gun Barrel in Jackson, WY. They have the BEST elk sirloin!

LucyJoy, it looks lie Rechelle’s settings have a limit on nested reply comments, so I’ll just put this here. In general, I braise it much like a regular beef roast, except I use a bit more oil and butter in the dutch oven during the searing, since bison is so lean:

– Preheat the oven to 275/300 F (this depends on how “hot” your oven runs – ours runs hot so we cook at the lower temperature).
– Pat the roast completely dry. Remember, no dry meat = no sear.
– Season liberally (salt, pepper, garlic powder for us here, since we like to taste the meat)
– Put a couple of tablespoons, more or less, in equal parts of olive oil and butter in a cast iron or enameled cast iron dutch oven (hey, I have a le creuset! I could be PW!) on medium-high heat on the stovetop.
– When it’s hot, put the roast in, allowing it to sear completely on each side. Do not rush this and don’t fiddle with the roast. When it’s time to turn, the roast will lift easily from the bottom of the pan. If it sticks, it isn’t ready (or there’s something really wrong with the pan).
– Remove the roast, drain off all but about a tablespoon of the grease, and reduce the heat to medium.
– Toss in one sweet yellow onion, sliced, and saute a bit until the onions are soft. If you’re the type that like celery, some finely chopped celery can go in now to soften a bit.
– Deglaze the pan with some beef stock, and stir up all the brown bits.
– Put the roast back in, and add additional stock so the liquid is at least halfway up the side of the roast. I usually throw a bay leaf in at this point, and for a traditional beef roast I’d make a bouquet garnie with the bay leaf, peppercorns, and some thyme sprigs and throw it in now – this would probably work with bison, as long as it wasn’t too much thyme.
– Put the lid on, slide it in the oven, and leave it for a few hours. I usually check every so often to make sure there’s still enough liquid there, and to give the roast a turn about an hour and a half, maybe two hours into the cooking.
– If you’re like us and like one pot meals, chop up some carrot and toss it in about two hours into cooking (for us, it’s about when we flip the meat to see how it’s doing). Dice some potatoes and keep them in cold water. Poke the roast every so often and see if it’s starting to fall apart like a good roast should – about three hours is what we plan for here. Throw the potatoes in at this time, making sure they’re submerged, and increase the oven temperature by 25 degrees. Anything you add should be added based on cook times (longer cooking items need to be added sooner, shorter cooking/warmup items like corn or diced zucchini and squash later, and so forth).
– When the vegetables are done, pull the pan out of the oven and put it back on the stovetop on medium heat. If you like stew-like meals, mix a couple of teaspoons of cornstarch thoroughly with cold (not hot) water and add a little at a time to the pan, stirring gently. Remember that heat activates the starch, so be patient when adding and don’t just dump the whole thing in at once. Once you reach the desired consistency, turn off the heat and move the pan off the burner.

Last step? Eat, heartily, preferably with some homemade bread. Good stuff, and if it’s done right, the meat will literally melt in your mouth as any good braise should.

Bison are hard to contain and control.
They are wild animals and don’t have a lot of respect for fences and other boundaries, unlike domesticated beef. I have eaten bison and found it a little dry for my tastes. But, to each their own. Maybe I got a bad burger or something? Entirely possible….

Perhaps your burger was over cooked, Lori. Because bison is so lean, it’s easy to over cook.

Emily:

Lori,

THANK YOU for mentioning the kill plants. I’m not much for making comments, but this is an area that is vastly misunderstood. There are horses dropped off every day in the Idaho desert by people who don’t have the option of slaughter auctions any more. Some have been hit by high hay prices or lost jobs, or both and now can’t afford to keep their horses. The market has dropped, as a result of the excess horses and it’s hard to sell your animals now. For some the cost of having their animal put down is way out of the budget. (When I lived in Salt Lake City the cost of putting down my gelding (ruptured bowel) was twice the cost of his hay for a year.) The slaughter auction was a way for terminally ill horses to receive humane death at a price the owners could afford. It was also a chance at a new life for healthy horses who’s owners could no longer take care of them. I have owned several horses purchased at these auctions, they were excellent additions to our herd. An awful situation has been created by people who do not understand the industry or the needs of the animals. More cruelty occurs as these abandoned animals starve than ever occurred in the kill plants.

Just for the record I think it’s dumb to transplant thousands of mustang and then pay someone to take care of them, but if the government is handing out checks I can’t blame someone for getting in line.

The only other method I am of effectively controlling the feral horse population is killing them; whether it be at a slaughter (and the meat exported to European markets…..gruesome mental I know) facility or shooting them during a hunting season, an even more gruesome mental picture for me. I know of no other form of animal birth control except perhaps hormonal control, which is expensive, labor intensive and only lasts, I have heard, only a few months. Then, if I understand the medication properly, it only masks the heat cycle and alters the mare’s behavior but it is possible she is still fertile during that cycle. I know no one personally who has tried this hormone treatment, only what I have heard about it.
Sorry.
I wish I could give you a pretty answer to your question, Ga.

Oh carol the longwinded!
I like you! You said what I didn’t dare!
Can we be friends?

Shay in NZ:

Clearly I need help, because after watching that video I found myself watching more PW videos. Not sure how to paste a link here, so recommend you google “Macy’s Putting It All Together” for a Super Duper insight into Pie Near Woman’s Opinion on…. shoes and … Real Men. Gag.

Barb:

I only watched one of them but am wondering – what was even the point of all that??

Shay in NZ:

Yep, me too :)

My best guess is that Macy’s are aligning their brand to PW and “cool” bloggers in the hope of attracting their minions to the stores.

But these videos are very odd.

Barb:

I think you are right, Shay!

lee:

Long time reader, coincendently found you through PW many moons ago. Wouldn’t it behove you to focus more on you then PW? I always thought you were intelligent, but these days……..not so much. You are reminding me of my daughter in sixth grade. Be you.

taylor5622:

@lee

Excuse me, you’re accusing Rechelle of lacking intelligence yet you leave a comment fraught with so many misspellings so as to make it unintelligible? Did you graduate from USC too?

Rechelle’s research into the BLM and the government waste surrounding the Mustang program is top notch and extremely informative. I, for one, am glad she’s exposing PW as nothing more than a narcissist. One who’s amassed a cult-like following by creating a product based entirely on a lack of any discernible talent other than self-promotion, marketing and brand development.

I watched the YouTube video from LHJ. Yeah, the one where PW makes macaroni and cheese. I’m not sure what is more embarrassing…LHJ featuring this video OR Ree Drummond using the phrase Je’ne sais quoi when she adds dry mustard to her cheese sauce. And, in true PW fashion, she says Je’ne sais quoi not once, but twice. Yet, for me, the coup de grace was when, after her repeat performance she asked for a straw!! Yee Haw, someone get that girl a beret.

Rechelle:

The second time she saying Jenna Say Kwah it almost sounds like a name.

I didn’t watch the video, but does she actually know what je ne sais quoi means (or does she appear to)? Or is this her Rachael Ray moment, since RR does that annoying thing about nutmeg (“It just makes people go hmmm, what is in that?”).

Bea:

I too cringed when I watched it. I’m European so I have never made mac and cheese, but this pretty much looks like most of the recipes I have read. Is there anything special with PW’s recipe other than it’s made by the Royal Highness of Cattle?

Btw, she must have had SO much botox and fillers – her face looks frozen and her forehead is smoother than my computer screen. Help me Rhonda!

This recipe for homemade mac & cheese is the same as my great-grandma’s. And probably a lot of other people’s grandma’s, too.

I’ve always thought that most of her recipes were very basic, and I think we all need a stash of basic, simple recipes that are easy to make. That being said, almost all of hers seem to be the same recipes I’ve seen in church fund-raiser cookbooks for years. And saying ‘jenna say quah’ a few times while you’re making mac & cheese doesn’t make it any fancier or any more special.

annmarie:

And ending the whole thing by saying “macaroni and cheese is my life” was priceless. From the looks of her bloated face and chin I am thinking she is telling the truth on this one.

Bea:

Thanks Kelley! I agree that most of her recipes are very basic, the kind of food your grandmother would serve and some comfort food dishes, so I have never understood the big deal with PW’s recipes. It doesn’t help that they are interrupted with 40 photos illustrating how to chop an onion or melt a stick of butter.

I guess her cookbook would be great for my cousin who is 18 and moving to college and don’t know much about cooking – he needs a step-by-step instruction. But for the rest of us? And why drag a whole filmteam to her place to cook mac and cheese. I don’t understand the hype about PW, I really don’t.

annmarie:

Ree is in NY getting ready for her book tour. She is also giving away clothes she bought but never wears. I just wanted to alert everyone to those things…. if you read her site today be prepared to be especially sickened and annoyed. It is beyond the beyonds in terms of foolishness.

Anon.:

I wanted to scream at her to use proper English. I don’t know why she thinks “where I is at” is cute.

I see lots of people want the shirt. What a surprise.

Meme:

I think the use of “where I is at” was to stick it to Rachelle. You know, where I is at, bitch!

Mo:

I don’t fault her for buying stuff and never wearing it — I am plenty guilty of that myself. But thrift stores and charities get the benefit of my bad buying judgment, sometimes with the tags still on.

So she does not want to donate to charity or sell to a consignment shop … does that mean she gives away her clothes on her blog for the hits? Because the mixers, cameras, etc. get thousands and makes the amount she gets for the clothes seem paltry in comparison. So then is it for validation in her taste in clothes? Her way of letting the world know where she shops, and that she shops CLASSY?

Whatever her reason, I can’t help thinking that it is just not smart for someone in the public eye to give away personal items. Out of all her thousands of adoring fans there is bound to be at least one on the brink of crazy, and a PW wardrobe item would just go right smack in the middle of the PW Alter they’ve started in the basement closet.

Barb:

Another one of my gripes about her giveaways, once I started to see the light: have you noticed every time she has a giveaway of some sort, she always says she’ll announce the winner on such and such day, at such and such time. I don’t think they were ever on time, thus you have thousands and thousands of people checking 2 and 3 times (or more) to see if they’ve won. All those extra hits = all that extra cha-ching in the wallet.

Samantha:

Her giveaways are what gets people to her blogs..they are the main reason she gets an audience, in my opinion. And I agree with the vague timeline winner announcements, and also them being late most of the time. It’s all about the click traffic.

taylor5622:

While the literary world awaits the release of PW’s critically acclaimed “Black Heels to Tractor Wheels,” I thought I’d post a sampling of Ree’s recent tweets highlighting her lame attempts at humor.

From Twitter @thepioneerwoman:

“That whole plan I had of eating nothing but salads while I’m in New York isn’t so much working out for me.” 11 minutes ago via web

“I’ve been in NYC for three hours and I’ve talked to Marlboro Man on the phone four times. I can’t help it. I like him.” about 23 hours ago via web

“So far, all I’ve done in New York is lie on the bed in my hotel room and watch The Real Housewives of Atlanta marathon. Productive.” 1:41 PM Jan 30th via web

“I ‘ve done major damage in my kitchen this morning and I might sell the house so I won’t have to clean it. I’m glad we had this talk.” 12:54 PM Jan 29th via TweetDeck

Last I checked, she was giving away yet another “never worn” shirt — and there were 3562 people vying for it.

Samantha:

And something strange………the second closet giveaway shirt Ree says it has never been worn (and I think the tags are still on it) BUT it looks like the SAME blouse she wore on the Bobby Flay Thanksgiving throwdown showdown show.

Kait:

All her “TV” clothes run in the same vein. I am sure you could mistake one for the other easily. Besides which, I am certain she is now purchasing this clothing for the express reason to give it away. Perhaps her sheep complimented her on it and so she decided to buy another to gift them.

Samantha:

It is the same blouse, I checked the video…..maybe she buys 2 of everything and then lets her zombies have one to keep the clicks coming!

Meme:

Joie Reed Rustic Floral Top with looped trim $254.00, recently on sale for $101.97 at certain stores. This is item #17 and identical to the “Throwdown” top. Priceless.

Bea:

She writes that she wore a blouse in the same fabric on the throwdown show. I checked and it’s the same fabric, but a different cut. She must have spent $500 on two almost identical blouses. Just… wow. She is SO far removed from her readers. I don’t understand why most of the struggling homeschooling crowd think she’s “one of them”. She’s more like Pamela Ewing.

Bridget:

And while everyone is busy submitting their comments to win Ree’s shirt. Remember that it isn’t too late to pre-order her book. I was really bored in class today, so I spent some time reading the latest comments and boy are people excited that their pre-ordered books are on the way. Why bother? Most of the book is already on her website.

One comment was particularly funny because a woman said that she saw that Ree’s book was going to be on sale at her supermarket’s book store and you know they only sell the finest of crappy books at that supermarket.

Laura:

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks these personal clothing give-aways are beyond suspiscious. The blouse she’s giving away (presumably to make room in her wardrobe) is photographed in the same NYC hotel room she just posted pics of in ‘confessions’.

I recognise the carpet. So why did she take it with her? If it doesn’t fit, why didn’t she leave it in the country? Unless she JUST bought it and didn’t bother to try it on (possible), or gained a ton of weight in the last couple weeks (I blame the mac & cheese), or is just using these give-aways to segway into her self-promotion (read: get more hits over the next couple days)……

joy:

@Laura: Good eye! I didn’t even notice that, but you’re right about the carpet! Very strange.

I guess over 3000 page hits might have something to do with it: all those people think the shirt was hanging in the closet next to MM’s mud-caked chaps.

Barb:

Great observation, Laura.

Shay in NZ:

Couldn’t help myself. I had to post a comment asking if she took it to NY with her. Help me Rhonda, I may go to hell!

Kait:

Just to be a bitch, I did too. :) We will have to see if we make the cut. Gods knows with my luck I will win the ugly thing.

Bridget:

Shay: I am pretty sure that I saw your comment when the shirt giveaway first started, but when I checked back it had been deleted. At least I am pretty sure that it was deleted which would totally suck if you had really wanted to win the shirt. I understand a blogger’s right to moderate their comments, but Ree comes across completely untrustworthy due to the fact that she deletes any comment that is remotely negative.

I posted a fairly benign comment- filled with a bit of sarcastic Ree worship- and it got deleted. I also posted another comment in regards to a post that showed a “darker” side of Ree- she briefly touched on her frustration with ranch life- and I said something along the line that it was nice to see a more human side to her and that everything in her life isn’t perfect and it would be nice to see more posts like this one, and that comment got deleted as well. Along with my comments about why were my other comments deleted. (Wow, I am starting to write like Ree, by using the same word choice over and over again.)

I am not sure if the people running her blog realize that it would go along way towards maintaining Ree’s credibility, her stance of keeping it real, if they allowed some negative comments to remain. It wouldn’t change things with the Ree worshippers, but I imagine some of her detactors might view her in a different light.

I noticed that some “controversial” comments are allowed in the homeschooling section, so she is less concerned with maintaining the image of her guest posters, but the controversial comments are quickly overwhelemed and lost among all the pro homeschooling people. The detracting comments don’t ever really lead to a serious discussion about the issue present which is probably why they are allowed to stand.

One last thing: the homeschooling posts drive me crazy because the main homeschooling Nazi just makes these broad statements about the negative side of public school without any facts to support them. She does no research to support her claims and from the comments it doesn’t seem that anyone cares and they accept what she says as if it is the gospel truth. (And most of us know how true the gospel is) I wish that Ree didn’t have the influence that she does with her readers because of the mindless of her blog.

Kait:

She killed my comment about the carpet too. And today’s giveaway closet item is also photographed on that same hotel carpet! What a sham.

Bridget:

I just found out that I am not even able to submit a comment on her website. Well at least not from my home computer. I am going to check if this a different story if I try to comment at school on the computers there. I guess it is much easier to silence the detractors if you just block their IP addresses rather than trying to catch their comments.

Debbie:

Great eye. No doubt in my mind there’s a company involved in the giveaway of the shirt and she’s making money on this giveaway. I doubt the shirt would’ve made it to NY wrinkle-free. I doubt she would have brought it there in the first place.

Blogher limits the ability of their authors to host giveaways. I think the limit has been set to $35. So in order to do a giveaway she has to pretend these are her own items.

Kait:

But she gives away kitchen items with hundreds of dollars. How can she do that if there is a limit?

I was thinking that, too. Perhaps the Le Cruset and the Kitchen Aid and all the other big ticket items are donated to her for the giveaways in exchange for her plugging their brands? Or maybe blogher really does have special rules for PW…

Bridget:

Blogher does have different rules for Ree when it comes to advertising. Rechelle wrote about that when her blog was named My Sister’s Farmhouse, but I imagine that they probably have different rules when it comes to giveaways as well.

Debbie:

Absolutely. You didn’t really think she’d dragged a suitcase with 17 giveaway shirts to NY to photograph them on a hotelroom floor and give them away, right? She’s being paid for that. Big time.

Debbie:

Doe she openly admit those are sponsored giveaways?

JudyB:

Do you all not realize that a blog post can be written ahead of time, and posted automatically at a later date? At least on some blog systems it can. I have a friend who has a blog mainly aimed at friends, and she writes things several days ahead and sets dates to post them.

Anon.:

True, but the carpeting underneath the shirts in the pictures is the carpeting in her HOTEL room.

Do they manage to time travel as well so they can post pictures of places they haven’t been to yet? That’d be sweet!

rozdabiker:

I really enjoyed the mustang discussion. I learned quite a bit about an issue that I knew nothing about. Now after reading all the above discussion I at least have an informed opinion. I started on the side of the mustangs and ended up with an entirely different view. Now you guys are back to the same old gossip about PW and there is nothing new to learn there. Recelle, get another issue started. You are good at that.

taylor5622:

@rozdabiker

Geez, another one of Ree’s sockpuppets. Don’t you guys have better things to do?

If you feel the discussion is not to your liking, LEAVE! Find another blog to troll sweetie.

JJ:

How is she a sock puppet? There was no smack down of Rechelle and no worshiping of Ree? She enjoyed the discussion on the mustang issue and is stating an opinion to Rechelle – that she enjoys topics that Rechelle brings up and that she feels she had some good info.And I agree with her – a good discussion with differences in opinion is much more interesting.

taylor5622:

@ JJ

“Now you guys are back to the same old gossip about PW and there is nothing new to learn there.”

Did you miss the above portion of @rozdabiker’s comment? I happen to disagree and I believe most of Ree’s detractors do as well. There’s always something new to learn about a woman who has based her professional life on a charade. Rechelle’s Pie Near Woman posts are extremely popular topics that serve to expose a fraud. In turn, they generate a lot of discussion.

Ree’s sockpuppets who run to her defense need to come up with a different schtick. Posting a comment that starts off positive and ends with a slam on this blog, it’s topics and/or its readers have become very commonplace with the trolls. You guys are fooling no one.

JJ:

Taylor – I read the comment – and there was no slam to Rechelle – she enjoyed the mustang discussion, said she enjoyed Rechelle’s ability to get a decent discussion on issues, then asked for more of that. Nothing wrong with that. Rechelle’s creative and funny Pie Near Woman was not mentioned, not slammed. Maybe she just wanted the discussion to stay on topic which is hard to do in blog land.
As far as someone basing their professional life on a charade – this is done all the time – quite sad and funny at the same time. There is something new to learn everyday in EVERY situation.

Bridget:

I agree with JJ about the commen. I don’t think that poster intend to show any support towards Ree and wasn’t saying anything against Rechelle. I think that they were just voicing a frustration over the turn in converstation away from the mustangs and towards gossip about Ree. From the perspective of the rodzbiker the mustang converstation has more signficance than talking about the Pioneer Woman and I think that she was paying Rechelle a compliment for her skill at creating a place where converstation about important issues can take place.

rozdabiker:

taylor…..I’m sorry I offended you. it was only a statement of what I enjoy about this blog. I never meant it as a slam to anyone.

joy:

@rozdabiker

I didn’t take it as a slam… I see your point but I do think it’s all somewhat relevant. It all falls under the “Keepin’ it Real” umbrella. Besides, I need somewhere to vent sometimes!

Now, onto the next topic!

taylor5622:

@rozdabiker

Please accept my sincere apologies if I misinterpreted your comment. For the record, I don’t consider it gossip when someone who is ripping off the gullible is exposed as a phony. But that’s just “where I is at.” Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

I truly respect your opinion along with your right to disagree. Cheers!

Charlotte:

Wonder how many oil wells they have. You can see one in the background of the whole fence building blog. Now there’s some money!

Bridget:

@Talyor: can you tell me more about twitter? If we put @pioneer woman on a twitter post then does she end up seeing them? Will other people see them? I am just wondering if it would help to spread Rechelle’s Pie Near Woman posts. Plus Rechelle posts some seriously funny Pie Near Woman twitter posts and it is a shame that more people aren’t seeing those either. I am just wondering how Twitter works. I know that I probably sound like my grandmother, but I am a bit more computer savvy than that but Twitter is new to me and I would like to put it to use, but would also like to know if it is all that useful.

jalf:

Everyone who follow you will automatically see everything that you post on Twitter.

And everyone who just so happen to come across it can see it as well.

And yes, if you post something containing a @ followed by another user’s username, then that user will be notified of your post.

I have no clue what PW’s username on Twitter is, though, but I don’t think spaces are allowed, so ‘@pioneer woman’ probably won’t work. (or rather, it will notify the ‘@pioneer’ user, whoever that is. ;))

taylor5622:

Ree goes by @thepioneerwoman

taylor5622:

@Bridget

Don’t worry. Twitter is really fun and very easy to use. When you compose a tweet and include @thepioneerwoman in it, that functions as a “mention.” The person with that user name is notified via a variiety of methods. For example, if someone tweets and mentions my user name, my cell phone sounds a special tone to notify me of the mention. I use Tweet Deck and one of it’s handy features is the ability to search by a user name.

Ree definitely keeps track of this or at the very least, one of her paid minions does.

For example, if someone tweets and mentions my user name, my cell phone sounds a special tone to notify me of the mention.

taylor5622:

Sorry @Bridget, I accidentally hit submit before I edited the above comment.

If we are trying to get the truth out about the PW, we need to post tweets with her user name in them. Not only will Ree see them (that’s a given) but if anyone else searches @thepioneerwoman, the results will yield all tweets containing those words. I have posted a number of tweets with links to Rechelle’s site hoping people’s eyes will be opened after reading this great blog. I purposely included @thepioneerwoman in those tweets in hopes of saving some of her deluded followers.

Thanks for the info. I will figure out how to log into my Twitter account. If forgot my user name and password, but once I do I will do my best to spread the goodness and humor that is the Pie Near Woman.

I’m sorry I had a really hard time understanding any of this as you did not once mention a bassett hound nor did you even as much as intone a single thing about Lad’s forearms.

I need an interpreter so that I can fully understand.

Kait:

I must say that if I married someone with a name like Ladd I would probably change it too. But after a cigarette smoking advertising icon? No.

Bridget:

Okay Rechelle. I am sure you are getting tired of our talking about Ree, but this is a such a haven for venting frustrations about her. I just had to say this last thing. So I wrote a review of her book because get this my mom bought it me for my kindle. I couldn’t believe it. She thought it would inspire me to find love because she is not a big fan of the one that I have. But I read it and reviewed it.

Now I am being attacked by all her fans. Of course, I got the your jealous comment. Then I got comments telling me I was a bitter cynic and that nothing could make me happy. Nothing, you say. Nothing has the power to make me happy. I must be a truly horrible person. Next time my dog cuddles with me on the bed. I am going to kick her and say you can’t make me happy, you stupid dog. When I am experiencing uncontrollable laughter with my friends. I am going to smack one of them in the face and scream at the top of my lungs. I hate you, I am unhappy. Rechelle, I am going to stop reading your blog because it makes me happy and nothing can make me happy.

Why do they find it acceptable to personally attack a person that is simply stating their own opinion of a book. I don’t attack them for liking the book. I really don’t think this happens much with other books that are reviewed. People probably just let the negative reviews happen. One person told me my terrible world review has colored my review. Yes, and I am sure that people’s hero worship of Ree will color their reviews. It is difficult for most writers to divorce themselves from their perceptions. Perceptions color everyone’s world view.

Shells:

Her Today show appearance is a train-wreck …. oh the critique that could be done ….. so many things to say

Bridget:

She came across as a proud christian woman in her behind the scenes interview. Playing perfectly to her audience. But she could barely open her eyes. It was strange.

Kait:

I am sure with that much botox in your forehead you couldn’t open your eyes much either.

Samantha:

here is Ree reading an excert of her ‘masterpiece’ on youtube……hmm I thought she went to the bar with friends that knew Ladd already..when did she change that point.?

Just an fyi, not an opinion…I read her installments online when she was first writing them…she met up with old friends at the bar, but they were not with Ladd…he was there by himself, and she sort of approached him and they started talking.

Samantha:

The way I heard/read it the friends weren’t with Ladd but they knew him. And even if she hadn’t met him before, she knew the last name, his family is well known in that area. And she actually met up with him twice before she went out with him….it isn’t like she went out on a date with a complete stranger. Just like she talks about all those years she lived in LA…uh she went to college there and then came back to Oklahoma.

Shells:

She came out with some line from Jerry McGuire and seemed to surprise herself …..

Samantha:

Okay weren’t we just talking about what ‘pioneer’ has to do with HER. Well now she is saying the name was really just tongue in cheek. (is she reading our discussions?) I guess her whole blog must be tongue in cheek then. My has she changed her story from when she first started blogging, she seems to be making excuses and change-ups now that she actually has to act her blog part. She is making a mess of things imo. Her story is falling apart.

Oh and now she is all upset about not getting home (she is stuck in NYC) well gee didn’t she start all this fairy-tale stuff to GET OFF THE RANCH? She is so PHONY! blech.

Kait:

I am fairly certain that since she has started getting publicity that much has disappeared off her site that was once there.
There was a part that I remember really well from reading BHTTW on her site. It was the same day MM called months after she had seen him in the bar. She was had pretty much said that she had smoked weed the night before and was still jumpy or some such thing. What do you want to bet that has disappeared. And calling her brother retarded? Not anymore. Now he is “developmentally disabled”.
I think all the “this happened to me” stories on her site have all been “re-edited” for her new public. The “real” got lost a long time ago.

Bridget:

Okay. I promise to stop for the next couple of days after this last voicing of my frustrations and if i I don’t vent then I might start screaming and bashing my head into a wall, and then Ree wins. Okay. But there was another woman that posted a negative review of the holy Grail or as normal people refer to it as, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels. (the book is horrible enough, but I heard a sample of her reading it and it got worse. I know that is hard to imagine, but it is that bad, but..)

So she was getting rude comments in regards to her honest criticism of the books. I weighed in and offered her some support, and now some crazy bitch is trying to tell me that I made up a new account so I could post another negative review. She said I didn’t cover my tracks enough. Yes, you wing nut it is a huge conspiracy to bring Ree down. I told her I dont have the time or inclination to write another review, but if this continues then I might not be able to resist the urge to act as rude or as paranoid as Ree’s loyal fans. Boy did I want to unleash some nastiness and I probably should have been more graceful in my reply. Take the higher road, but these idiots just beat all.

It is a fucking book. She is a talentless hack blogger and the criticism about the book. It isn’t like I went on a rampage against Martin Luther King or Jesus or Santa. You know a person of signficane, who tried to lift up humanity and show us the way to a more compassionate world. Jesus Christ it is a book review. Okay venting over. I apologize for telling everyone of my petty , insignificant woes and for bothering you with all this nonsense. Thanks for being here as a sound board.

From the FAQ:
“Millions of people love these books. Do you really think you’re ‘better’ than them? What gives you the right to be so rude? You realise that by criticising Jordan’s books you’re criticising these fans too?”

It is, clearly, a ticklish business telling people who ‘really really love these novels’ that I think the novels are crap. Here’s what I wrote a while ago in another place:

So, let’s say, you read The Eyes of Argon and you love it; you’re gripped, thrilled, moved and inspired. Then you read a review that says ‘The Eyes of Argon is terribly bad stuff.’ Do you then

(a) say to yourself: a different opinion to mine, how interesting, let a thousand flowers bloom and a thousand schools of thought contend, one feature of great art is that it provokes a diversity of responses. Or

(b) say to yourself: the review, by calling this book crap, is saying that my taste in books is crap which is tantamount to calling me a big crappy crap-crap. Nobody calls me a big crap-crap and gets away with it. Where does this motherfucker get off calling people big crap-craps like this? Why can’t he keep his offensive opinions to himself?

But of course it goes without saying that reviewers respond to the book they have read, not to the idea in their heads of the sort of people who like the book they have just read. Apart from me, I mean. Obviously when I review, I do so specifically to mock the value-systems and worth of people who read. People like you, sir. And you madam.

Pam:

you obviously are a ‘creative’ person. Too bad you don’t use that creativity & the obvious ‘time on your hands’ to do something more productive & helpful to society. No one is saying you have to like everything others do-but that doesn’t give you free rein to continuously mock them. Try doing something really useful-such as spending your time working for a food pantry, homeless shelter or volunteering more hours at your sons’ school. You will look back on what you are doing years from now and, as most people do, realize how stupid your actions were. It’s time to start acting like a responsible, respected adult 100% of the time.

Bea:

I hope you will post the same comment on PW’s site. She obviously has tons of $$$ and a herd of sheeple who do as she says. How much charity does she do, other than give away her old rags?

Samantha:

I was thinking the same thing, Bea…….but wait PW deletes all criticism. Isn’t great that Rechelle provides an outlet for all that PW propaganda…..

Sharon:

If there was a like button I would press it and you know her clothes are not old rags..lol They cost more than I spend on a single item.

Bea:

They cost more than what we spend on groceries per two weeks. :)

Sharon:

I just realized that my comment made no sense. I can buy quite a few outfits for what she pays for one blouse.

taylor5622:

Quoting @Pam “No one is saying you have to like everything others do-but that doesn’t give you free rein to continuously mock them.”

Who says? You? I might remind you we live in a free country. If Rechelle wants to author a blog mocking a self-absorbed narcissist who advocates a lifestyle she doesn’t believe in, indeed she has every right to do so.

Borrowing your words, why don’t you “try doing something really useful such as spending your time working for a food pantry…” instead of trolling this blog mocking Rechelle while trying to foment a comment war.

Dear @Pam, “it’s time to start acting like a responsible, respected adult 100% of the time.”

Anon.:

About the book BHTTW – I went to Amazon to take a look inside the book, and read a few sample pages. In Microsoft Word, there is a Tool to determine the readability and grade level of a book, so I decided to see what her book was. I typed in:
Counts
Words – 264
Characters – 1210
Paragraphs – 6
Sentences – 22
Averages
Sentences per paragraph – 3.7
Words per sentence – 12.0
Characters per word – 4.4

Result:
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of book: 5.4 !

Wow. Not too deep, is it?

BA:

I just went over to Amazon and looked at the first pages of the book. What jumped out at me was right on the first page she mentioned ordering a $500 coat from a catalogue. And that was like 15 years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever owned a coat that even cost 1/2 that much. Then further down, there were recipes. Right in the middle of the book? What’s with that? Obviously good marketing to get more people to the website, but how weird.